


Sand Castle

by Erimia



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Episode: s04e09 Sand, F/M, GPSC zine, Missing Scene, Original by Not Ginger, Translation from Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:07:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29912535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erimia/pseuds/Erimia
Summary: Servalan and Tarrant are captured by the strange planet. Timeline is the season 4, episode "Sand".
Relationships: Don Keller/Servalan, Kerr Avon/Servalan, Servalan/Del Tarrant
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: The House Always Sins





	Sand Castle

**Author's Note:**

> This is my translation of the fic [Замок из Песка](https://a007.diary.ru/p195112123.htm?oam#more2) by Not Ginger. Previously published in the 2021 Blake's 7 fanzine The House Always Sins.

This goddamn sand was everywhere.

It was snaking around the floor, creaking on the sheets, hiding in their hair and spilling from the clothes that they were quickly taking off each other, getting tangled in sleeves and clasps and trembling with excitement. Like a dark hulking creature it was pushing heavily against all the doors and windows of the base, turning it into an impenetrable prison.

Virn, the green planet with nothing but the sand.

“It doesn't rain here,” said Tarrant, brushing a tear off her cheek, and the next moment they were already kissing as if their lives depended on this, and the funny thing was that they literally did.

The sand was gritting on their frantically bumping teeth, the sand was sticking on their skin, damp with sweat. It felt as if the sand, dry and hot, was also between her legs, where Tarrant’s fingers were moving with not enough skill, sometimes too gentle, almost unnoticeable, making her feel nothing but annoyance, sometimes too scratchy and painful. He was doing this diligently and energetically, with all the vigour he was capable of, but could find neither a suitable rhythm nor a right angle. Perhaps in another time she would have enjoyed this youthful awkwardness and inexperience – she liked to take very young officers as lovers sometimes and teach them things that weren’t part of the Federation Space Academy curriculum.

In another time, but not now when the sand was looking at her from all places with the dead frozen eyes of Don Keller.

Not now when the sand was turning under the breath of inexisting wind into the dead frozen smile of Kerr Avon.

“Well, how is he?” Avon was asking her and laughing only with the crooked line of his lips while his eyes kept observing her coldly, assessing, calculating, drawing conclusions. “Is our gallant Tarrant good in bed?”

I’ve had better, Avon. I’ve had better.

On the other hand, you could have sent Vila on this mission, she thought cynically, reclining against the pillows and exposing her neck to Tarrant’s kisses. Or Scorpio could have been somewhere else on the other edge of the galaxy, and now the Investigator Reeve, whose slimy gaze alone used to make her want to scrub herself in the shower for hours, would have had his fingers wriggling like greedy nimble worms between her legs.

No, clean fresh-faced Tarrant, who so aptly turned Reeve from the living pile of dirt into the dead one with one well-directed shot, definitely wasn’t the worst option. Even though his experience was probably nothing more than a couple of flings on shore leaves, if not just a drunken, fidgety and wet fumble with a giggling classmate on prom night in the Academy.

Tarrant’s lips kept ravaging her breasts awkwardly while the sand was observing, watching them writhe on the damp crumpled sheets, watching them copulate, watching them submit to its will.

The sand was waiting.

She suddenly remembered that woman – what was her name? – that had been with Don Keller at the end. That woman who took a gun – blasters don’t work on that damned planet, only guns, so she took a gun and blew out her brains to not be turned into a test animal in the beautiful cage with a soft bed full of sand and a grit-filled romantic dinner. The sand is so horribly straightforward – one man, one woman, the simple arithmetics. Tinkling glasses, tinkling laughter, ding-dong, ding-dong, don-don-don...

“Don. Dun. Din. Don.”

The voice of the crazy computer that they found was still mocking her in her head.

“I love you. I know a land where love…  
Don Keller.  
Keller. Killer. Cooler.  
Love is the only reality.  
Perhaps we will be lovers for a long while.  
Who knows? Who knows?  
Don. Dun. Din. Don.”

We were lovers for a long while, Don Keller, and now you are just food for the sand laying in the next room like a sack, still warm. Still warm after all those years, and she thought everything was long since buried under snow, covered with hard prickly frost patterns and locked by strong hands of ice, yet still kept chasing after this illusion across the whole galaxy while he was waiting for her for five years only to tell her that he died.

Don Keller, a sand castle. She was eighteen, he was twenty six, one man, one woman, they spent together one month, three weeks and two days, the simple arithmetics. He passed her through his fingers, molding her into everything he wanted, she was ready to take any shape in his hands, she flowed and melted and hardened like fragile glass threads while the wind was heaping up the sand into dunes and barchans and making it sing. The time pouring behind the walls of the transparent vessel seemed like an endless stream of multicoloured shining grains of sand that fit each other perfectly.

But all sandglasses have to be turned over one day, and sand castles don’t stand for long.

“You will manage, you always do,” he uttered before leaving, for a moment pressing his lips to her forehead, and didn’t look back at her from the doorway.

Keller. Killer. Cooler.

She did manage – oh yes, she always did.

The best castles are made of metal and bulletproof glass.

The best lover is power.

Don. Dun. Din. Don.

Who knows? I do.

We will never be lovers.

She moaned loudly and Tarrant started fumbling even more eagerly, seemingly thinking she was encouraging his efforts. Then she finally took his hand and directed it where the aching wasn’t as acute as in her heart, but where a touch of another person could still make things better.

Pleasure pierced her skin like hot needles, and the two of them turned into a wild animal with many hands, an entangled knot made of harsh breathing, wet sounds and sharp scenes, moans, yelps and sighs. She was furiously impaling herself on the young lithe body that reacted obediently to her desires, absorbing it, enveloping, enwrapping, seizing and gripping, trying again and again to fill painfully pulsing emptiness. Her nails were tracing strange patterns on his naked back, either claiming posessively or desperately clinging to something that was slipping away like sand through fingers. But the sheets were spreading before her like a boundless desert where no one but her have ever been, no one but unbearable heat, only hunger and thirst for hundreds of kilometres, no matter how much one beats against another flesh, whispering “more” or screaming loudly, trying to drown the wind that howls inside.

Then the sand swirled before her eyes and she herself disintegrated into billions of small grains of sand, for a fleeting second allowing herself to pretend that there was something in it besides mechanical friction between two bodies, some pleasant convulsions and warm thick fluid spilling over her inner thigh.

Only for a fleeting second, not longer. Tarrant still was breathing heavily, slackening and laying on top of her with all his weight, while she already was pondering, calculating and imagining how he’ll tell Avon everything after returning to the ship. She’ll let him return, holding off on killing him is worth it. Tarrant won’t resist blurting everything out, he’s too naive, too loyal, and Avon… In her imagination Avon was laughing.

“Don’t move,” Tarrant whispered hotly into her cheek and she immediately froze, ready for any danger, for fighting back, for fighting for her life if necessary. But Tarrant just reached out and touched her lips lightly. “You have a sand grain here.”

She smiled, switching off the alarm in her head, held Tarrant’s palm in front of her face, pulled his fingers that still smelled of her in her mouth, slightly biting and licking them.

They kissed for several minutes, without heat now, slowly and languidly. Then she reclined against the pillows once more, seeming less like a dangerous panther and more like a real girl next door, napping after the first awkward sex on the shoulder of her boyfriend, a dreamboat that would make jealous all the girl friends that she never had. She imagined Avon as a scowling strict father of this dreamboat and it made her want to laugh aloud.

“Go away,” she thought lazily and brushed the image of Avon off like sand on the floor. At that moment she didn’t need his sharp, venomous wit, not the painful bruises left on her neck from his fingers, not the indelible bitterness left on her lips from his kisses, always too short to stop wanting more, always too long to pretend not to like them. The kisses that didn’t make her one bit closer to understanding him. Avon was a quicksand and today getting herself out was the matter of life and death.

Her occasional lovers rarely stayed till morning. She lost interest in some even before they convulsed inside her one last time and slipped out with a wet squelching sound, others always found some urgent business that required their presence even if the clock was showing three in the morning. Watching them squeeze hurriedly their sweaty heated bodies into tunics and robes, she understood that they were just scared to death of staying near her.

Everyone was afraid of her. Almost everyone.

Don Keller wasn’t afraid of her, but Don Keller perished, decomposed and crumbled to dust, even though his still warm body was in the next room, looking past her at something with empty lifeless eyes. 

Avon wasn’t afraid of her, but it would be careless to fall asleep in the same bed with him, unless, of course, you intended to wake up with a knife in the back or in some even more unpleasant situation.

Tarrant wasn’t afraid of her and he was there – soft, living, made of flesh and blood, murmuring in his sleep meaningless words in which neither of them believed. Yet it still felt nice to hear them now, when she was snuggling up to him with her whole body, feeling the beating of his heart, allowing herself this strange pause. 

Besides, Servalan thought before the sand in her eyes started shifting and flowing, blending into dry streams of disconnected and disquieting dreams, Tarrant had another undeniable advantage over his dear leader.

In the morning it will be easier to take away his gun.


End file.
